A Guide to Selecting

an Underground Task
Management Solution
TABLE OF CONTENTS

03 04 07 13
Introduction Shift Changes Key Players UG Pro Key Features
• Shaping • 3 Important Trends • Challenges, • Benefits and
Smart Change Affecting Underground Responsibilities, and Solutions
Underground Mines Considerations • Before and After
• 3 Important Challenges • Active Roles in Comparisons
to Be Addressed Mining Shared
Underground Responsibilities
• 8 Most Pressing
Underground Issues

15 17 19 21
By the Numbers Success Stories Conclusion About Us
• The UG Pro • Example of Return on • A Complete • About Hexagon
Difference Investment Underground Mining
• Example of Increased Solution
Truck Productivity • Integrate Other UG
Tools
 “
This reference book is for existing underground mines, open pit
mines that are extending their life by moving underground, and
hybrid mines that combine both. It examines the challenges
facing underground miners and the key players affected by
those challenges. Our success stories explain how we’re helping
customers reveal best practices and pitfalls to avoid.

Whatever your role underground,

stay safe and keep shaping smart change.
INTRODUCTION

| Shaping Smart Change Underground

As mines push deeper beneath the surface for deposits,

the need for better communication and collaboration
increases. Complexities that may be easier to overcome
above ground, require domain expertise and often
non-scalable customized solutions, below. Data from
a growing number of instruments, humans, and mobile
assets needs to be outside the mine for analysis. But
the network infrastructure and software to collect
and process this data can become obstacles for true
underground mining optimization and safety.

As the dominant planning, high-precision operations,

and vehicle safety technology vendor in surface and pit
mining, we have spent considerable time developing
underground methods to meet these demands.

Your mine’s ability to digitize processes and react

to workflow changes in real time means optimized

operations, and safer management of assets and fleet.

By digitizing, connecting, and optimizing your

underground mine, you can avoid unplanned downtime
and enjoy peace of mind in an uncertain business.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 3

SHIFT CHANGES

| Industry Trends: The 3 Most Important Trends

Affecting Underground Mines

Digitization Autonomous Process Automation Controls

Real-time task adherence is Mines planning to be fully Mines are inundated with data
the ability for tasks and sub- autonomous depend on at the expense of information.
level tasks to be automatically software and hardware Process automation controls
sent across a network from platforms being built are a complex system of end-
surface to the development and deployed, circulating point sensors and machines
and working faces, as well as exponential amounts of data producing data across the
haulage levels. Converging between mine workings, legacy networks. A fully
excel and paper-based engineering offices, and scalable IoT platform begins
processes to network-enabled self-guided machines. with making an existing
workflows is the first step Compared to open-pit mines, investment smarter, scaling
on the road to a connected underground operations only as fast as a mine’s budget
mine. Mining relies heavily offer more opportunities allows, and progressing by
on: paper processes; both for selective autonomous proving each phase pays for
simple and highly complex innovation. Mines can isolate itself before embarking on
Excel worksheets; and radio a sub-level for work to be the next milestone in an IoT
communications between undertaken by a tele-remote roadmap defined by a mine.
dispatch centers and miners. operation or autonomous
Until digital transformation, machine. Any customer taking
and without mobile tablets the autonomous path will
or devices such as task need a good communications
checklists, mining will infrastructure to support their
continue to depend on paper autonomous vision.
and radio communications.
A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 4
SHIFT CHANGES

| Industry Needs: The 3 Most Important Challenges

to Be Addressed Underground

Locate and track humans and

Task and machine optimization Manage exponential
machines in a GPS-denied
increase in data
environment

Underground mines face Data from a growing number Underground mines seek an
complexities (safety, fleet of instruments, humans, and affordable, scalable, future-
management, maintenance, mobile assets needs to be proofed solution that can
UG infrastructure) that may outside the mine for real-time exchange data agnostically
be easier to overcome above analysis. in real time; that is able to
ground, but require domain produce reports documenting
expertise and non-scalable progress in safety, productivity
customized solutions, below. and cost controls.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 5

SHIFT CHANGES

| Industry Issues: The 8 Most Pressing Underground Issues

Face and headings production

1 Mobile Asset Locations 2 activities out of communications

Downtime for unplanned Electrical assets set to full on,

3 maintenance 4 regardless of mining shift phases

Data gaps for updating short-term Most assets and process control
5 planning tasks 6 endpoints not on network

Short-term plan not shared with Excessive or non-existent voice

7 both planning and operations 8 and data-comms links

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 6

KEY PLAYERS

| Challenges, Responsibilities and Considerations

Key players involved in purchasing a task management solution and their

primary concerns
Any new UG fleet/task management solution will impact every aspect of an operation
and touch everyone. Change management is vital to its successful implementation.

The following are key players who

should be involved.
We’ve outlined a brief description of their roles,
challenges and purchasing considerations.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 7

KEY PLAYERS

| Corporate Management
Challenged with ensuring overall profitability while protecting staff and equipment,

?
corporate management considers reduced costs and reduced risk when evaluating any
new solution.

Concerns:
• Safety
• Production Ask Yourself:
• Return on investment
• How can the system be used to
• Closing the gap between planning and operations improve safety for operations?

+ Effect on production and revenue • How much can production be

increased after installation?
+ Stakeholders—risk of stocks being affected by
reporting less than predicted

• By how much will costs be reduced?

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 8

KEY PLAYERS

| Mine Manager, Mine Director

Likely the primary decision-maker to influence technology purchases, the manager is responsible for the productivity and

?
safety of the mine and miners. The manager defines staffing and outlines project plan delivery. They ensure adherence
to project goals and deadlines, requesting modifications when necessary. They evaluate the performance of assets and
miners, and direct corrective actions when problems are detected.

Concerns: Ask Yourself:

• Safety • What is the current gap between
planned versus actual?
• Production • What are the expectations after the
system goes live?
• Resource utilization—people and equipment
• How can equipment use be
• Return on investment maximized?
• Closing the gap between planning vs. actual • How can multiple teams manage task
coordination?
+ Production vs. revenue
• What are the technical requirements
+ Potential for missing optimizations
for WiFi?
• Use of analytics tools to help close gap between • Will solution work with our current
planning and operations business analytics tools?

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 9

KEY PLAYERS

Production Manager
The Production Manager implements and monitors all drill and blast activities, evaluating performance while analyzing
and monitoring all equipment. The manager initiates process improvements to achieve key outcomes. The manager
supports mine procedures and work practices aimed at preventing accidents and injuries.

Shift Supervisor
The Shift Supervisor oversees miners and their activities, usually underground and traversing levels, ramps, shafts and
passages called drifts and stopes, to observe task activities first-hand. The Shift Supervisor ensures miners accurately
record mining activities, entering recorded data within the mine’s platform to share with management.

Maintenance Manager or Fleet/Equipment Manager

Tracks activities performed by equipment and responsible for conducting maintenance. Identify potential opportunities to
improve and avoid unplanned events.

Planning Manager (long-term and short-term planning)

Responsible for determining the best way to extract a resource quickly and cost-effectively. The Planning Manager
develops and advances a mine, scheduling all mining activities to produce an optimized operation. The Planning Manager
assists with compiling management plans to report on project progress and help determine project planning.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 10

KEY PLAYERS

Miners and Equipment Operators

Miners often provide feedback to the mine manager, so it’s important that any solution’s benefits appeal to them. These
are the front-line workers who rely on years of safe experience; are skeptical of new gadgets or processes; and need to be
convinced that a solution makes their jobs easier, safer, faster and empowers them to increase productivity.
IT managers, health and safety managers, control room staff and dispatchers will also be affected by any decision to
implement a fleet/task optimization solution.

Shared Goals:

Visibility of Increase production Costs saved

underground operations

Operator productivity—increased Safer Optimized equipment

working hours, less queue time Operation utilization—less machine
maintenance downtime,
staff-hours saved

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 11

 HxGN MineOperate UG Pro combines tablet-hardware and software
applications to manage underground fleet equipment and optimize
production-time utilization in real time. It uses existing underground mine
communications to transmit and receive data between mobile assets,
miners, and the surface control center.
The platform tracks locations and movement, and monitors task-level
activities, modifying miner and machine workflows in real time
as the mine develops and advances.

UG Pro is the critical first step in digitizing manually captured activities.

| UG Pro Key Features

• Fully Integrated with short-term interval control • Standard SQL and time-series databases.
scheduling, reconciled by productivity and
completed activities. • Integrates with Hexagon solutions and external data.

• One source of information for planning and • Reporting engine for modeling intelligent scenarios.
operation teams. Planners see production progress • Determine equipment activity dependency by Activity
on their short interval software. Scheduler.
• Facilitate the shift change between operators and • Monitor mobile assets
task progress on the equipment.
• Dashboards, tracking nodes and task communications.
• Maintenance staff use UG Pro to track planned and
unplanned maintenance activities. • Reduced time lag in schedule updates.

• Off-the-shelf tablet. • Handle new IoT protocols.

• Reportability by phone apps and office applications. • Incorporate your own business intelligence and
analytics tools.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 13

 Before UG Pro After UG Pro

Lack of visibility below the surface Miners are safer, connected, and tasks are updated in
real time

Miners are paper-driven and radio-dispatched Effortless first step in digitizing mine checklists and tasks

Planning and operations rarely interact UG drills, Reported gaps will help validate budget for
LHDs (Load-Haul-Dump vehicles), gators, automation strategy
and haulage vehicles are poorly tracked

UG drills, LHDs (Load-Haul-Dump vehicles), gators, Being able to predict and react to onboard data reduces
and haulage vehicles are poorly tracked maintenance costs

For safety, Operations spends considerable time Tracking assets eliminates time wasted in identifying
monitoring achievements and locations via radio locations of people and fleet

Schedules lack flexibility and can’t be updated if Update schedules in real time, improving task adherence
conditions change

Unplanned events halt or slow production Fleet performance is relayed to maintenance, reducing
unplanned events

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 14

BY THE NUMBERS

| The UG Pro Difference

UG Pro integrates planning, operation and maintenance, allowing for better planning and execution. It means better
equipment utilization and increased production. It’s designed with microservices architecture which interoperates with
third-party data, eliminating data gaps from highly proprietary sources.

An underground
gold mine using
UG Pro:
Improved utilization of equipment Improved tasks around pre-start checklist
significantly compliance

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 15

BY THE NUMBERS

| The UG Pro Difference

This proven platform contains a robust palette of native applications that can be modified and configured to any
specific underground operations. These include time and task management, maintenance module, cell apps, business
analytics, and Leica imaging and scanning tools for determining over-break (drilling and blasting larger segments than is
necessary).

An underground
gold mine using 6 % 4.5 t/hr

UG Pro:
Decreased unaccountable task Improved tons/hr from 35 t/hr to
wasted time by 6% 39.54 t/hr in four months

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 16

SUCCESS STORIES

| Two Month ROI for Small Mine

The Challenge
The mine is small compared to the company’s other operations. So, minimizing
Country: Mine Type:
operating costs is important.
Brazil Underground The mine needed a system that would regulate its 24 ventilators, so the
ventilation system would only run when necessary.
It needed to integrate with the underground fleet management system and
with the frequency inverter to provide real-time guidance to dispatchers,
Commodity: Solution: informing them when to turn the system on and off, based on the mine’s
Gold UG Pro operation.

The Solution
The mine uses HxGN MineOperate UG Pro to manage underground fleet equipment and broadcasting time-
utilization information. It communicates real-time information to dispatchers from remote areas deep below the
surface.

UG Pro is integrated with the mine’s fleet management system and its frequency inverter. The inverter is set

to a determinate rotate (0 to 100%), so even when the ventilators are on, electric power is saved by reducing
production rotation. Two months after implementing these improvements, the mine achieved monthly savings
worth double the investment in UG Pro.

Developed specifically for mines lacking underground data networks, UG Pro optimizes efficiency using tablets
that store and forward critical information between supervisors and workers via network access points. Within
the labyrinth of a commercial operation, digitizing all complex and simple mining tasks keeps data flowing.
Visibility from mobile application dashboards ensures confidence in location and schedule adherence.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 17

SUCCESS STORIES

| Truck Productivity Increased by 11%

The Challenge
Country: Mine Type: A mine employs two mining methods: cut-and-fill and longhole stoping. In
Brazil Underground 2011, to improve safety and productivity, cut-and-fill was largely replaced by
longhole stoping (sub-level stoping and variations). Cut-and-fill is still applied
in stopes with lower inclination, requiring the use of in-stope pillars in wider
stopes.
Solution: 2020 is targeted for full digitization so the mine required an integrated solution
Commodity:
UG Pro for digital transformation in a challenging gold mine environment.
Gold

The Solution
HxGN MineOperate UG Pro integrates with other Hexagon safety, fleet, and data visualization solutions. It also
synchronizes with data from third-party vendors. It leverages secure IoT protocol messaging brokers to expand
information flow with minimal obstacles. Upon implementation, the solution provided intelligent tools for quickly
modeling different economic and production scenarios with confidence.

UG Pro monitors task-level activities, updating miner and machine workflows in real-time as the mine develops
and produces ore.

In UG Pro’s first month of deployment, production at the mine was 35.21 ton/h. Four months later, production was
39.54 ton/h, an 11% increase in fleet production.

The company defined business drivers and a set of systems, processes, and technologies were assessed against
the company’s current and future initiatives.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 18

CONCLUSION

| A Complete Underground Solution

Strong communication is essential to a safer, more productive
underground mine. UG Pro is a complete solution for task and fleet
management, combining tablet-hardware and software applications to Time Allocation Tracking
manage fleet equipment and optimize production-time utilization in real
time.

UG Pro uses existing mine communications to transmit and receive

data between mobile assets, miners, and the surface control center.
This ensures supervisors no longer need to spend hours moving among
locations to visually observe task completion, schedule adherence and
resolving workflow issues.
Task Allocation
The platform tracks locations and movement, and monitors task-level
activities, modifying miner and machine workflows in real time as the
mine develops and advances.

It’s the critical first step in helping mines to digitize manually captured
activities.

Any personnel on the mine can have the production in the cell apps. It
removes the process to go the control room for knowing the production, Activity Tracking
or miss communication by radio what is the production.

Maintenance people can use the same tablet to track all maintenance
Gain visibility below the surface with
activities.
HxGN MineOperate UG Pro
Request a Demo
A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 19
CONCLUSION

| Integrate Our Other UG Tools

HxGN MinePlan Engineering UG

Enables engineers to evaluate and design optimum stope shapes; and create UG mine designs and
tactical activity-based schedules. Incorporates MinePlan 3D, Engineering UG CAD, Planner, Room +
Pillar, Activity Scheduler Standard (Atlas) and Stope Optimizer.

HxGN MineOperate UG Foundation

Manages underground fleet equipment and optimizes production-time utilization in real time. Tracks
locations and movement, and monitors task-level activities, modifying miner and machine workflows in
real time as the mine develops and advances.

HxGN MineEnterprise Platform

An operational management hub that connects processes and data in a central place to support the
management of your mine.

HxGN Survey & Monitoring

Measure high walls and perform real-time slope monitoring using radar, total stations and GNSS. Our
GeoMonitoring Hub makes sense of combined measurement results with easy-to-use software.

A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 20

ABOUT US

| Hexagon and Mining

Mining depends on precision, accuracy, and safety.
Mines must find ways to integrate, automate, and
optimize critical workflows for a competitive edge.
Now more than ever, the industry must cut costs while
improving safety.

Hexagon is the only company to solve surface

and underground mine challenges with proven
technologies for planning, operations and safety.

Hexagon is a global leader in sensor, software and autonomous solutions. We are putting data to work to boost
efficiency, productivity, and quality across industrial, manufacturing, infrastructure, safety, and mobility applications.
Our technologies are shaping urban and production ecosystems to become increasingly connected and autonomous —
ensuring a scalable, sustainable future.

Hexagon’s Mining division is helping to connect all parts of a mine with technologies that make sense of data in real
time. Driven by professionals for professionals, our solutions are tailored to your needs and delivered on your terms —
short term, long term, for the life of your mine.

Mining depends on precision, accuracy, and safety. Mines must find ways to integrate, automate, and optimize critical
workflows for a competitive edge. Now more than ever, the industry must cut costs while improving safety.

Hexagon is the only company to solve these challenges with proven technologies for planning, operations and safety.

Hexagon’s Mining division brings surveying, design, fleet management, production optimization, and collision avoidance
together in a life-of-mine solution that connects people and processes. Our customers are safer, more productive and
can make sense of their data.

Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 20,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of
approximately 4.3 bn USD. Learn more at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.
A Guide to Selecting an Underground Task Management Solution | 22
Thank You